The newsletter which curates & delivers the best mind hacks, mental health tips & high performance strategies to you every single week.

🧠 MIND HACK

The Power Of ‘Tracking’ (Or... How To Create Effortless Improvement *Without* Consciously Changing Anything!)

There was a study conducted on the link between tracking & weight loss... (& don't worry, we’ll show you how to use these findings to achieve whatever your goals are, even if they are not weight loss.)

In this particular study though, the participants were told not to make any conscious changes to their diet, or to their exercise routines...

The only change they were asked to make is to merely write down (to 'track') what they ate & what exercise they did, every day...

That's it...

Not changing anything, just write it out.

And so, they did...

And the researchers, of course, tracked their results over time (in this case, their weight)...

When the study was completed & the results came back, they were rather shocking!

The individuals in the study... despite being told not to make any conscious changes to their diet or their exercise... they had actually started to lose weight!

That's right, they lost weight by doing seemingly nothing... just writing some stuff on a piece of paper every day!

Let’s get this straight... their weight loss definitely did not come from the movement of their fingers while they were writing - it came from something else (which we'll explain in a moment!)

But this study, when done the first time, did arise some skepticism...

People doubt the outcome.

Of course, they did...

Who wouldn't?

With more than 2/3rd of American's nowadays either overweight or obese & the fitness industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars... & people all around the world doing anything & everything they can to lose weight (dieting, spending hours at the gym, starving themselves sometimes, unfortunately!)... yet, here, people were losing weight without making any conscious changes to their life at all...

So they repeated the study...

They did it again & again...

And the results tracked.

Each time, the results would come back the same… the participants would start losing weight!

By getting individuals to simply track what they ate & what exercise they did… it led them to lose weight!

Now, here's the real reason we're sharing this with you (& the reason that participants started losing weight despite being told not to make any conscious changes to their diet or exercise...)

It comes back to, once again, the great power of tracking your progress & how that creates greater self-awareness & inspires new action, almost automatically... (no conscious thought required!)

Weight loss... as you know... it doesn't just happen...

People need to do things differently in order to lose weight!

So, in the study, that's what they did....

The participants ate less & exercised more on average...

"But, wait, wait, wait..." you might think...

"Didn't you write that the participants were told that they couldn't make any changes to their diet or their exercise..."

Yes, we did...

But, the key word here is conscious!

They couldn't say, "I'm going to eat less"... "I'm going on a diet"... to get a coach when they didn't have one before... or sign up for the gym or fitness program in order to get better results - they couldn't do that!

Yet, they were, in fact, eating less... exercising more...

...except, they were doing this without, in most cases, even realizing it!

They were doing this not consciously, but subconsciously!

Because that's that’s what our brains do...

If you've ever tracked anything, you've probably experienced this first hand... (although, you may not have even realized this was going on!)

Think about it...

In the study, they had to write down anything & everything that they ate during each day... what does that that do to their brain?

Well, if there's writing down another thing for the day & you see that the list is getting a little long, one's brain is likely to go (again, not necessarily consciously)... it's likely to go:

"Wow, I've eaten a lot today!"

Or, even not that... but we're likely to feel bad (a slight negative emotion) when we're writing down anything & the list of what we've stuff in our faces is getting long for the day...

Essentially, tracking & reflection creates that type of self-awareness...

Like this - take a look at the framework:

In the case of this example, it incentive the participants to eat less.

To keep the list of everything they ate shorter (so they don't have to feel the same sadness, embarrassment perhaps about having such a long list; so we can feel better about ourselves & our progress tomorrow.)

Or, someone goes a whole day without exercise...

At the end of the day, or the next morning, they look at their list & see that they did NO exercise... what are they inclined to do next time?

To move; to exercise.

Because, psychologically that tracking led to that moment of "oh, wow, I haven't exercised all day... maybe I can do better here?"

So, more often than not, we do... even without thinking about it.

That's the great power of tracking, which leads to self-awareness.

Btw, another research study (similar to this!) shows that putting people in a room with more mirrors in it led to higher performance at particular tasks - yes, a room with more mirrors; that's all it took to raise performance in this study.

Why?

Because looking at ourselves in the mirror (just like writing down what we did, or ate, or exercise we did or didn't perform) makes us more "self-aware" in that moment... and therefore (not necessraily consciously, but subconsciously!) can incentivize us to do better next time!

It's the exact same idea...

Self-awareness (which comes from tracking, from measuring, from keeping yourself accountable, from reviewing our progress) motivates us naturally to do better...

And can, in some cases, can even bring about completely unconscious change & better results by itself (as this fascinating weight loss study showed!)

That's the power of tracking...

Or, as Peter Drucker once said (& this study proves):

So, that's the importance of tracking overall...

The question is how can use this to achieve your own goals?

First, figure out what you want & how you know you're making progress…

A good question to ask is:

This will help you come up with metrics you can then track...

Next, you're going to figure out the 'inputs' that create the 'outputs' within the system you're operating in...

Contuining the weight loss example...

'Losing weight' is an 'output', not an 'input'...

It's not something you can put on your 'to do list' or schedule in your calendar...

Rather, there are certain 'inputs' which we know leads to changes in output…

Simple ones including eating less (or better), moving/exercising more... or less obvious ones like sleep (more sleep helps weight loss), stress (e.g. stress leads to your body storing more fat), or the social aspect... (if all the people you spend time with have poor health habits & are overweight, you're statistically more likely to be so as well).

So, figure out the inputs for your own goals...

And from there, start tracking those (just like they did in the study!)…

Implement this simple, yet powerful, mind hack in your life today!

‎‍💭 QUOTE OF THE WEEK

Who Are ‘You’, Really?

Here's the quote well worth pondering:

We're often told that we need to 'find ourselves' as if who we are is some ready-made thing... but, as many philosophers & thought leaders suggest, it's likely not...

Rather, 'you' are something that you get to create, to design, to craft as you wish…

Put simply: you get to become whoever you want to be!

‎‍🎓 FEATURED COURSE

How To Break Bad Habits Easily & Build New, Good, Empowering Ones Rapidly!

Have you ever heard the saying,

Well, it's absolutely true...

When you change the things you do consistently (a.k.a. your habits!), everything changes for you in your life...

Take health & fitness as one example...

As you very well know, it's not created through random, sporadic action — like a random workout or eating a salad now & again...

Rather, good health/fitness comes from building the right healthy habits...

...at which point, you do the right things (eating right, exercising, taking care of yourself) with the same ease/automaticity as brushing your teeth in the morning! (no thinking, planning or willpower required!)  

Same with your career, or relationships...

Highly-successful careers & loving relationships are built through consistent effort & work (a.k.a. habits)...

When you build the right work, career, communication & relationship habits, you consistently & automatically do the right things & start seeing amazing results...

(Habits = Consistency ← remember that)

So, yes, when you 'change your habits' you really do 'change your life.'

Now... to help you to implement this life-altering advice into your life, we published an new course for you here at Potencia, called;

”Habit Hacking: How To Break Bad Habits Easily & Build New, Good, Empowering Ones Rapidly”

In the 3 parts of this course, you'll learn everything you need — from paradigm-shattering insights, to eye-opening frameworks, all the way down to specific strategies & step-by-step processes — to change your habits & therefore your life!

Here's just a (tiny) fraction of what you'll learn inside:

• A complete overview of how habits really work... including, how they form in the first place, the 4 stages of habit formation, how your brain activity changes at each stage & other game-changing frameworks.
  

• 6 biological, psychological & emotional drivers that guide all our decisions, actions & habits... (plus: how to use this to build the right habits into your everyday life!)
  

• How Bogdan broke his disgusting habit of biting his fingernails using a simple 3-step process... & how you change your bad habits too!
  

• The "3 types of economic incentives" governments & law makers use to create order in the world (plus: how to use an adapted version of them in your life, to incentivize yourself to do the right things & avoid doing things that disempower you!)
  

• How to apply the "golden rule of habit change" to easily replace (& switch out!) bad habit, with new, good & empowering ones...
  

• 12 proven "Accelerated Habit Building" strategies... you can use to build any habit that you want, faster & more rapidly than ever before...
  

• How to use "Habit Stacking" to create amazing routines that set you up to win across all the important areas of your life!
  

• The "point of no-return strategy"... that "tricks your brain" into doing difficult things, easily!
  

• How to use the same strategy routinely used by dolphin trainers, slot machine designers & even the lottery... to positively condition in new habits that empower you to do more, be more & achieve more!

And a whole lot more!

Get all the details & get started today »

‎‍♟️ MENTAL MODEL

’Inversion' (Or... How To Solve Life's Biggest Challenges More Easily By Taking The Reverse Approach!)

It was the German mathematician, Carl Jacobi, who best exemplified this particular mental model...

He was famously known for solving difficult problems by following a simple strategy: “man muss immer umkehren”

(or loosely translated, “invert, always invert.”)

Today, this is a ‘mental model’ used by many, including 2 of the smartest (& in addition, richest!) people of all time… Warren Buffett & his business partner, Charlie Munger.

They use the mental model of "inversion" to flip problems or information on its head & look at it backwards… in turn, avoiding bad decisions & making better ones!

Which brings us to the mental model itself...

What is ‘inversion?’

Well, it based on the idea that most of the time the only real perspective we consider is the straight forward, direct, forward-thinking one...

We want to make money, so we ask "how can I make money?"

Or, we want to solve a problem, so we think "how can I solve this problem?"

It works, but it's only 1 perspective & therefore, limited…

Also, often we don't know what we want…

In fact, we often know what we don't want much more vividly & clearly than we know what we do want.

We can use this to our advantage.

What you do is you take a question & you invert it...

For example, instead of asking "how can I succeed?" (although that's a question that's usually too vague to be helpful, but we'll use it for this example?)

Instead, by applying the "inversion" mental model, you might ask,

Based on this, you then list out all of those things...

Now, you simply avoid them...

And by avoiding them, you move away from them & towards what you ultimately do want…

Plus, this is usually simplier to do as well…

Or, instead of asking "how can I be healthier?"

You can ask, "What are all the things that are stopping be from being healthy?"

You invert & consider the question from a different perspective (backwards, instead of forwards, in this case?)

Or, “what are all the things that could go wrong?”

A great example of planning for the "worse case scenario", so that you're prepared for everything & therefore, are actually more likely to succeed...

So, that's the "inversion" framework & mental model!

And if you’d like to learn more thinking tools like this one that you can use to make better decisions & achieve better results, be sure to check out our newly-released, companion newsletter called:

‘Frameworks For Life’

As part of this publication, we do the heavy lifting & grunt work of meticulously researching, studying & curating the best insights, concepts & frameworks for you & share it all… helping you make more intelligent decisions & get ahead in life...

And ultimately supporting you to achieve more of the results, the success, happiness & wellbeing you truly deserve in this life!

👉 Click here to claim your V.I.P. access for free »